Editorial: We need to fix a sick system of sick days in Masschusetts

It has to make you ill to see longtime public employees take off two, three, even more months at the end of their careers because they accrued unused sick time.

By The Patriot Ledger

It has to make you ill to see longtime public employees take off two, three, even more months at the end of their careers because they accrued unused sick time.

It is a practice that drains tight budgets and hurts services in a community because a replacement often cannot be hired until the incumbent has officially left the post.

The latest case is retiring Rockland Town Administrator Bradley Plante. Plante notified selectmen last month he would step down in October. But Plante is owed some $13,000 for 41 days of unused sick time and the town cannot afford to pay that. The solution is Plante will leave Aug. 10 and be paid until sometime around mid-October, when he is eligible to collect his pension.

In the meantime, Rockland will not have a town administrator handling the day-to-day operations because of budget constraints.

What Plante is doing is absolutely legal, upfront and earned. By all accounts, Plante has done a very professional job and part of his reason for leaving is the frustration of dealing with the town's dwindling resources.

To his credit, Plante has told town officials he'll remain available to answer questions until his retirementand he offered to stay on board if the town could find the money to pay him the $13,000 in the fall.

But the situation points out the discrepancy in public sector benefits that hamstring town officials and budgets and drive taxpayers mad. The recent case of Charles Lincoln, the former director of security at Plymouth County Correctional Facility, is the one that most comes to mind when it comes to abuse of accrued sick time.

But there are others that do not rise to that level but cost taxpayers thousands of dollars every year.

In 2003, a Whitman firefighter had 120 unused sick days when he took early retirement.

An interim fire chief in the region negotiated a contract with the town that enables them to buy back 175 unused sick days.

Two years ago, selectmen in one South Shore town allowed a recreation department head to use her remaining sick days between November and March to finish out her career and collect her retirement.

We don't mention their names because they did nothing illegal and it would be unfair to make them targets for misdirected anger. But clearly, local and county government need to address this both for management and collective bargaining agreements.

The Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 100 percent of state and local governments provide sick leave benefits while in New England, only 67 percent of private employers offered paid sick leave.

The labor department's survey also found that 93 percent of municipal employers allow sick time to be used for other reasons. In addition, 56 percent of state and local governments allow unlimited accumulation and less than 3 percent of employees have unused benefit loss.

Some towns have buyback provisions, allowing them to purchase unused sick days at between 20 to 50 percent. In many cases, the unused sick time can have an effect on calculating pensions.

We admit we are taking a simplistic approach to a complex and long-standing practice but it is incumbent on municipal officials to spend taxpayers' money in the most efficient manner and paying someone who is healthy to not report to work and leaving the position unfilled is the height of inefficiency.